Word: matsunaga
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...which is native born and historically chauvinistic, picked up on the horrific implications in the remark. Then the reaction from the U.S. hit the fan. William H. Gray III of Pennsylvania, black chairman of the House Budget Committee, angrily withdrew a dinner invitation to Japanese Ambassador Nobuo Matsunaga. Representative Mickey Leland of Texas led the 21-member Congressional Black Caucus in calling on President Reagan to demand an apology. Esteban Torres of California and his 14-member Hispanic Caucus were equally furious...
...almost 210 years, the U.S. has muddled along without an official poet laureate. This lack did not noticeably hinder the work of such natives as Poe, Whitman, Dickinson, Eliot, Pound, Stevens, Frost and Robert Lowell. But it bothered Hawaiian Senator Spark Matsunaga, an avid reader and sometimes writer of poems, including one called Ode to a Traffic Light ("Impartial traffic cop/ That blushingly speeding cars do stop...
From the moment Matsunaga entered Congress, as a member of the House in 1963, he began a lonely but determined campaign to create a national poetic license. Last year he finally succeeded. Librarian of Congress Daniel J. Boorstin agreed that each new consultant in poetry to the Library, a post that has existed for 50 years and carries a one- or two-year term, would also bear the title of poet laureate. Matsunaga was understandably elated: "The poet laureate of the U.S. will raise the prestige and respect of the poet to the point where youngsters will aspire to become...
...already a vexing question. The prospect of regular spats over who will be the next laureate does not seem terribly poetic. Fairly soon the U.S. will have accumulated more laureates than the 18 that England has amassed in almost 300 years. In a calendar sent to friends and constituents, Matsunaga has written, "If the lessons of human experience were all written in verse, we might better learn and remember them." One metrical piece of advice: "Abandon what's foreign/ After Penn Warren...
...aides trundled him onto the Senate floor in a wheelchair, a needle and intravenous tube still inserted in his arm. Senators gave Wilson a standing ovation, which he turned to laughter by asking deadpan, "What is the question?" He voted yes on the budget resolution, but Hawaii Democrat Spark Matsunaga rushed in from his Senate office to vote no, and the tally was deadlocked at 49-49. Vice President George Bush was in the chair, however; he had cut short a Western speechmaking tour and rushed back from Phoenix Thursday morning. Bush cast the tie-breaking vote...